Lately the crooks are getting to the grease before Griffin’s trucks do - especially in Houston. “The grease doesn’t solidify” in the Texas heat Griffin says, so thieves “can just suck that product out year-round.” Lt. John Butcher of the Houston Police Department says that while some use vacuum trucks like Griffin’s, lower-tech oil rustlers “scoop the grease up with a bucket and dump it into 55-gallon drums.” That method has drawbacks for the crooks, Butcher says. “You can smell ’em.”
The thieves have cost Griffin an estimated $80,000 in broken grease vats in the last two years, not to mention lost profits. But in Houston, help is on the way. Police have started cracking down on the “night riders,” and Griffin’s Houston tonnage has jumped 40 percent in recent weeks. All sides agree that stealing grease is a dirty business, but as Griffin says, “One man’s waste product is another man’s raw material.”
